When I have too much to say, I have no listener. It becomes immensely difficult for a talkative me to keep my thoughts to myself. I have to express it and this happens to be an ideal platform for me to do so.

Happy b'day doordarshan...

Year 1989: It was a sunday. 4 year old gaya3 sat on her granny's lap and watched Arjun fighting with Kauravas. The opening score was her all-time favorite. She could not sing it properly, she made mistakes in pronouncing the sanskrit words, but she loved it anyways.

Year 1990: It was a sunday. 5 year old gaya3 did not know what malaa dee ad was all about. She innocently sang the mala dee garb nirodak golis jingle when a guest asked her to narrate a poem. Her embarassed parents took her to bedroom and told her to narrate baba black sheep the next time someone asks her to narrate a POEM.

Year 1992: It was a sunday. 7 year old gaya3 cried and threw her compass box at her brother because she was forced to go for Balvikas (a moral science class meant for kids) when Potli baba kii kahani and Jungle Book was aired. She loved watching Jungle book, but her parents wanted her to become a good human being and not a female Mowgli.

Year 1993: It was a sunday. 8 year old gaya3 was super excited because her bhai had tuned DD Metro in their TV set, DD metro was more fascinating and more entertaining than DD1. She started watching Junoon without fail every week.

Year 1995: It was a sunday. 10 year old gaya3 was surprised to see more channels being tuned in her TV set. She stared hard at the TV set when her bhai watched MTV. It was nothing like chayageet or chitrahaar that she used to watch every sunday. It had more of international songs and was more 'yo' than DD. She liked it. But she was still faithful to DD Metro.

Year 2000: As time passed, 15 year old gaya3 started loosing interest in watching DoorDarshan. She found it dull, boring and preferred watching world cup matches in Star Sports than watching them on DD. She was hooked to Cable TV.

Year 2008: Gaya3 now a 23 year old girl suddenly realized that the content of the programs aired on the various channels were almost similar. Every serial or a show was a xerox of another show or serial. She realized that entertainment is now pure thrash and that people have been fooled into watching this thrash. The mahabharat that was aired in 1980's appealed to her more than the mahabharat aired in 2008. The Jaspal Bhatti comedy 'Flop Show' made her laugh more than The Great Indian Comedy Show. A dull and drab presentation of authentic news made more sense to her than the stupid anchors shrieking at the top of their voice in every news channel without any rhyme or reason. She missed the purity and innocence of Doordarshan. But then the cable TV had made her a slave and she never switched on to Doordarshan though she was tempted to do so.

Year 2009: This week, Doordarshan celebrated it's 50th year. Gaya3 has vowed to watch Doordarshan for a whole week starting from tomorrow just to see if Doordarshan has changed it's content/format in order to keep pace with the changing tastes of the audience.

P.S: Belated Happy b'day Doordarshan. I am your fan too though not a loyal one. I know that you have a great fan following in remote areas of the country and am proud of your existence.

Note: I know most of you might have watched Doordarshan as a kid and might be having some fond memories. I do not know if I am successful in reviving those memories, but these videos surely revived the old memories of my childhood. Hope it brings a smile on your face too. Enjoy!

This is a compilation of some of the famous ads that were aired during the 80's and the early 90's

And finally this is my favorite...infact it's the current ringtone of my cell phone :)

Haha!! Lovely post !! i was smiling all the way through the post! I used to love all the programmes back then!

(1) Chandrakantha(2) Yug(3) Swabhimaan ( This is gotta be the mother of all those saas - bahu shit they air on the TV today!! )(4) Jungle Book(5) Circus(4) Fauji(5) Nukkad(6) Dekh Bhai Dekh(7) Zabaan Sambhlake(8) Turning point ( that is when i fell in love with Renuka Sahane!)(9) Tehkikaat - Remember the title track? and Sam D'silva! I cried when the show got over and Sam was kiiled!(10)Rangoli(11) Chitrahaar

Ah!! sunday used to be so much fun back then!! back to back programmes!!

P.S : The other day i saw DD when my cable connection was gone. It was so sad to see the quality still lying low and the programmes still so oldish! I hope DD gets a wake up call soon!

I could relate to this post 98%.. even the dates are identical.. I did not sing Maladee's poem.. I sing these kind of things now }:-P

I also loved doordarshan... especially the cartoons..mowgli, duck tales, tale spin, Alice in wonderland, tarramtoo, gayabaya and what not!!I liked Tehkeekaat, Surbhi, Knight Rider.. Chitrahaar and Rangoli was so regular at our house that missing those were like missing one day's meal..!

Infact, I sang Surabhi's title track everytime i was asked to sing.I memorized my favorite song "Ek do Teen" while I ogled at my then fave actress Madhuri. I used to sing n dance every moment I got then.Couple of years back, while cleaning out the old toy-box, I refused to throw my He-Man figurine; I was more enthusiastic than my brother. :D He-Man's still cute. Hehee

Oh!I never knew that Doordarshan was celebrating its 50th anniversary this week, but your post gave me more reasons to celebrate other than that fact.How I remember those idle sundays 14 years back when Mowgli was being aired. I still love the song "Jungle Jungle" You made me feel nostalgic!But nice execution of the post, I loved it!

Well, after the inception of the internet TV has become boring and it will boring!

This was a wonderful trip down the memory lane. Not to mention their news telecasts with the innumerable "Rukawat ke liye khed hai" and their newsreaders who appeared to read out of school textbooks.

And ha! U gonna watch DD for the whole week. I bet u can't... I will shave my moustache if you watch nothing but DD for the week. ( So what if I am clean shaved? I'll still use my razor over my invisible moustache) Lagi shart?

hey HR, thanks for visiting my blog and thnks for following my blaag hope u find it interesting and not torturing.

hey rammy...yeah i remember watching all those serials that you have listed here...tehkikaat teh teh teh tehkikaat...yeah i remember tht track...those were the good old days...i tried watching dd yesterday but hell i did not enjoy it...wonder how i will watch it for a whole week

AS...LOL yaa the shocked expression on my guest's face was something which I can't forget :)

thanks insignia for your comments...yeah i guess i am coming out of the writer's block.

thanks layman :)

abhinav thanks...u sing the mala d jingle now? ahem...

thanks gkam for that bear hug...and am glad that I revived the old bachpan kii yaadein :)even i used to like the surabhi song...melodious it was.

Hi! i am a first timer to your blog. I loved the post. Nostalgia! I loved the "Mile sur mera tumhara", "Bhaje sargam", and other instrumentals they had, especially that sarode piece Amjad Ali Khan (guessing, not sure). Really missed those days when we looked forward for that special movie that would be aired every week. Can't remember the day on which it was aired though.

I would like to share an incident with you. My dad was transferred to Mysore and our house was in the middle of a jungle. I was in my 5th std. Early every evening after school, I would usually venture out to explore the nearby woods with my bicycle and tommy (my pet dog) would accompany me. I lost track of time one day and forgot that "Anil Kapoor's Mr. India" was premiering on DD National that evening. The terrain not favorable for biking forced me to run, pushing my bicycle. I gave up pushing my bike half way and parked it by a solitary tree on the back of a lake. I was looking forward to watch the movie from the beginning and ran so fast that, I got some small scratches here are there. I reached my home, and slipped on the smooth marble floor, chipped my two permanent front teeth. I am 24 and they are still uneven. :-) Well, DD effect! We sure loved that channel, didn't we?

Thank you for reminding me of my golden past memories. Looking forward for more posts from your end.

there are more coming to mind: Idhar Udhar,Ye jo Hai Zindagi,Aarohan, Samundar, Shri Krishna, Captain Vyom, Dil Dariya, Kashish (my fav with sodesh berry and swaroop sampat as leads),Sohaib Ilyasi (not getting the name now, just the tag line: "together we can and we will make a difference. Goodbye for now"), Circus, Philips top 10 (jagdeep's dialogue: "aaun maaun chaaun" used to make me smile everytime i heard it),Itihaas (only serial by Ekta Kapoor which doesn't start with a 'K', and it was good),Deewar (Mukesh Khanna. "Ye zamaana bahut bura hai ___ bhaiyya"),Reporter (Shekhar Suman debue),'Waqt ki Raftaar (Sri Adhikaari Brothers production),Tea Time Manoranjan where Raju Srivastava first came in,Vaidehi (based on Ravindranath Tagore writings),Alladdin,Imtihaan (tragic'est serial i have ever seen with Renuka Shahane and Alok Nath as father and daughter),*********************************

HEY gayatri, loved ur post... u would also like to check http://aviralshrivastava.blogspot.com/2009/03/random-bakwaskuchh-bhi.html for similar nostalgic stuff....

oooo thankqqq for this! brought me back sooo many memories! wow remember the days...my fav was Jai Hanuman!! and of course captain vyom and Shaktiman!!boy those days no cable tv and only doordarshan...i think that shud come back! :)!! nice nice post...cya around

I used to run the Old Doordarshan Serials community on Orkut. That's when orkut was in Vogue. The fossilized remains are here: http://www.ghushe.com/doordarshan/

BTW, at my age of 28 I've an advantage of remembering "Phir wahi talaash" and Yugantar and Ganadevta and Giant Robot and Sigma ... and the paraphernalia such as the aluminum antenna and wooden case around the TV ... and the brands such as Uptron and Dyanora and Bush and BPL! You did evoke some nostalgia :)

Just read this post. ..This is such a cool post gaya3! Made me feel very nostalgic..I actually went through all the videos from youtube here.wonderful! I remember I used to wait for junglebook, He-man..

WOW ..i just reached this blog trying to find the name of renuka shahane's serial which i watched so religiously.Now i read it in one of the comments that it was Imtihaan .Actually I saw the other actress who played renuka's younger sister on TV the other day and its then that i remembered the show but realised that i had forgotten its name. the web is amazing in that sense.....it has evolved so much in the past few years....:-)

The other day i saw this actrees who played renuka shahne's sister in a very popular dd serial.I couldnt remembe rthe name so i googled it out.And here I am ..found that serials name (iMTiHAAN) in one of the comments here..was an amazing serial dat..wow google..wow blogspot...

Nostalgic Blog-Post. Loved it. The Doordarshan days were the best part of our childhood. Please read my post titled "Sundays" when you get some free time. I have tried to write about my Sundays with Doordarshan. Hope you will like it...

About me

Hi, i am Gayathri Vishwanathan. No not even distantly related to Vishwanathan Anand.
Wanted to be a journalist, but ended up in a usual corporate job.
Mundane activities of life take up my time, and when I reach my saturation point, I try to calm myself either by listening to music or through writing.
Let me warn you, my blogs are nothing like what others write, it is boring and sometimes tiresome (not to forget the thousands of spelling and grammatical errors I make), however I write with the intention to express myself and to strike a personal chord with everyone who reads this blog.
Hope to see you here baar baar lagataar :)